Saturday Open House October 7th

Join us for our monthly Saturday Open House on October 7th. We are participating in POST, Philadelphia Open Studios, and we will be open starting at noon. Drop on by some of our members will be working on projects and some will be ready to show visitors around the space. See you there!

Also Intro Electronics class is October 12th 7:30 PM See here for tickets to that class https://hive76.ticketleap.com/introelectronics/

Testing credit card charges with Stripe in a simple Rails app

Following up on suggestions from the board meeting to look at Stripe for charging member dues, I found a couple Rails tutorials and deployed via Heroku… it works with a few lines of (rails) code! The reason to maybe not use “gravity forms + stripe” just yet is because I think it is $200/yr — you need a Gravity Forms Developer License according to:
http://www.gravityforms.com/add-ons/
Yikes. Is that right? Different sites report different $$ so until someone at Hive tries it we may never know!

Well, we can just make our own embedded form, and Stripe can also deal with subscriptions painlessly, apparently. Try it with the herokuapp link below:
*****WARNING: it will actually charge your CC $1. I promise to deposit it back to Hive*********
http://members-hive76.herokuapp.com/

Heroku is great, you deploy via github so we could also make the forms public (our private Stripe key is configured only in heroku and is NOT in the github repo). Here’s the rails app on github so we can collaborate; I put all the details for how I did this in the README.md:
https://github.com/jmil/member-dues

Thoughts?

Some more to think about:

1) Let’s make a member application fee of $1.00. This will ensure prospective members have Stripe setup BEFORE they become a member! Much better than if they are voted in but never actually pay…!

2) I think we should charge the Stripe fees *to the member*. This way we have dependable operational costs. You can see attached that a $5 charge results in only a $4.55 net gain because of the stripe fees, but this is still low cost and dependable for now (Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). So we would need to charge users fee*1.029 + $0.30 (rounding up by cents; Stripe only charges whole cents) for each fee we designate. Then if Stripe changes fees in the future we just update this amount and Hive still has dependable operational costs.

3) Stripe is nice! Your CC will properly process whatever we write into stripe, here’s how it shows up on my card statement:


4) Right now funds get deposited into my personal checking account (!!) since I don’t have the Hive76 bank account number. Does someone want to give me that? Or I can coordinate this with the treasurer. Again, I promise to deposit your test charges back to Hive.

5) Obviously it needs beautification, choice between member rates, a way to subscribe, etc. But that’s all optimization for later, this rapid hack was about feasibility. It’s feasible to use stripe!

Here’s what you see in the Stripe Dashboard:

Open House moves to 8PM!

Hive76 will be moving the Open House start time from 7PM to 8PM starting next week (9/21/2016). The reason for the shift is to accommodate member meetings during the 7 o’clock hour, so be on the lookout for more awesome things™ at Hive76!!

See you at the next Open House!

We’re baaaaaaack

It was just over six years ago that we had our last grand re-opening.

 

I’m pleased to say that Hive76 is about to re-open its door to the public once again, and in our new location! This time around, we thought we’d do things a little differently and decided to kick off our new space with a Grand Open House! If you haven’t been to a Hive76 open house before, why not make your first one a Grand one?!

 

When is this exciting event, you ask? Why, it’s tonight!! That’s right! Make your way to the Bok building at 9th & Mifflin (entrance on Dudley St.) this evening for all of your hackerspace needs! We’ll have plenty of our past projects on hand for you all to play with and our members will be hanging out for any & all of your questions, such as: “How do I become a member of this awesome organization?” We can’t wait to meet you!

 

When: Friday, January 29th, 7-11PM

Where: 1901 S. 9th St., Suite 106, Philadelphia, PA 19148 (entrance on Dudley St.)

How: RSVP here

Why? Because we like you

 

 

Hive76’s Building Temporarily Closed Down

buskers76 – photo by Matt Yarema

Time for a long overdue update on the building situation. As many of our regular open house visitors have noticed, 915 Spring Garden, the building where Hive76 has set up shop since its inception in 2009, has been shut down due to code violations after a small fire in another artist’s studio. It is an ongoing issue with the city and owners of the building to resolve, but meanwhile we have no access to the building, our space, or our tools, so open house is postponed.

In the meantime, Hive76 members have been working on new projects in our garages and home workshops, and are going to public events to stay involved in the community, such as PumpCon this weekend. Stay tuned to our mailing list, along with our IRC Channel, #hive76 on irc.freenode.net, where we will make announcements of these events. We encourage everyone to reach out via e-mail and in person at any events we’re attending.

Hive76 is currently working with the realty company to find out when the building can re-open. We’re also investigating other options, such as moving Hive76 to a new location within Philadelphia. Either way, we’ll try to keep you informed about Philadelphia’s Premiere Hackerspace.

onward & upward – photo by Matt Yarema

Our New Laser Cutter!

The new laser cutter station in our classroom.

We are very happy to share that Hive76 is now home to a 45W H-Series laser cutter from Full Spectrum Laser! Members now have the capability to cut complex 2D shapes in wood and plastic in thicknesses up to 0.25 inch. If you can draw it on a computer, the laser can cut it. It’s great for engraving too:

Hive76 rocks!

We’ve just begun making test cuts and machine break in. Our next step is to develop a class for members to become laser cutter certified. I can’t wait to see what kind of cool projects our members will use this tool for. In the mean time, stop by our open house Wednesday nights 7-10pm to see it in action and find out how to become a member!

Laser guts.

 

DIY Music Night at Hive76 – Philly Tech Week 2015

Making things to make music

On Thursday, April 23, our celebration of Philly Tech Week events continues as we open our doors for DIY Music Night (7pm-???). If you’re into music, making music, or making things that make music, you won’t want to miss it! If you’ve been to the space before, you’ll know that we run on a steady diet of tunes. And on Thursday, we’ll have all our audio and music-centric projects out in what is sure to be the noisest night of PTW. Come by and see the space, make some amplified noise, hang out, or share your own projects.

We’ll have guitars, amps, synthesizers, sequencers, oscilloscopes, speakers, fuzzboxes, tremolo pedals, signal generators, oscillators, speakers, drum machines, pickups, karaoke machines and probably alot more – all made at Hive76.

There will be snacks and beer.

Pics from the Hivelord at Maker Faire 2014

Yours truly

Hello, mortals! Perhaps you saw me at Maker Faire NY over the weekend; I was the orange dude with the screen head taking your picture with my face. Well not only did your souls add a few thousand years to my already infinitely long lifespan, they got uploaded to the internet, where myself and others can browse them at our leisure from the comfort of our own time traveling spaceships. Have a look yourselves, and I’ll see you all in the past (or in the future, from your puny human perspectives).

Hivelord at Maker Faire NY 2014

Bow before me mortals
A selfie in the hall of mirrors

Philly Tech Week 2014: Hive76 DIY Music Night

If you’re into music, making music, or making things that make music, you won’t want to miss this! If you’ve been to the space before, you’ll know that we run on a steady diet of tunes. And on Thursday, we’ll have all our audio and music-centric projects out in what is sure to be the loudest night of PTW. No RSVP necessary.

When: Thursday, April 17 from 6PM to 10PM

Where: Hive76

Philly Tech Week 2014: Hive76 Open House

This is a weekly open house for Hive 76, where folks drop by to work on software, hardware, or any other DIY projects that may be of interest. The open house gives people a chance to meet the members and to see what kind of projects Hive76 likes to work on. Feel free to bring your own work along and ask questions! No RSVP necessary.

When: Wednesday, April 9 from 7 PM to 10 PM

Where: Hive76